22 September, 2016

The EU
parliament has been proved completely unable (and unwilling to some
extent) to prevail over the lobby-occupied bureaucrats and the ECB
dictatorship. So, eventually, the European Court of Justice decided
to take action and actually turn against European Commission and
European Central Bank.

Has the
troika infringed EU citizens’ fundamental rights through its
insistence on austerity measures in crisis-hit countries? It’s a
question that seems set to be analysed in ever greater detail and
may lead to claims being made against the European Central Bank,
the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission, after
the ECJ ruled that citizens are entitled to sue the troika.

The
Luxembourg-based court’s decision was based on the banking
crisis that hit Cyprus in 2013. At the time, the troika and the
Cypriot government agreed to a restructuring, which involved
uninsured deposits of over €100,000 being used to recapitalise
the Bank of Cyprus. In return, the embattled country received
a bailout from the European Stability Mechanism.

As a
result, some investors lost a large amount of money and then
decided to sue the Commission and the ECB for damages. Although
the ECJ’s judges dismissed the case as they ruled that
stabilising the banking system served the common good of the EU,
they added that bringing damages against the troika is possible in
principle, if someone’s fundamental rights have been breached.

German jurist Andreas
Fischer-Lescano told Spiegel Online that possible action could be
brought by Greek citizens on account of the so-called Memorandum
of Understanding which has affected the way in which prescription
drugs are co-financed. He suggested that anyone who has struggled
to access necessary medicines as a result would be eligible to
make a claim. However, Fischer-Lescano warned that the ECJ’s
decision is not a blank cheque for everyone and anyone to bring a
case against the troika. Although it is now possible to intervene
in extreme cases, the plaintiff will still have to clearly show
that their fundamental rights have been sufficiently violated.
Even then, the Court would have to judge on a case by case basis
whether the public interest outweighed their individual needs.

After the
eruption of the refugee crisis, which apparently was another strong
hit against the rotten structure of the EU, the decision of the
European Court of Justice is another sign of this ready-to-collapse
structure. A European institution finally forced to turn against
other European institutions. In the fairy tale of the European Dream,
that has been narrated to the Europeans for decades, all the European
institutions were supposedly created to cooperate for the common good
of the European citizens. Well, the decision of the European Court
officially confirms that this was an illusion.

But, it can
get worse: apparently the decision was a result of the pressure
exercised by the investors lobby, who lost their money, or fear that
they may lose more in the future, during the banking crisis in
Cyprus. It was not a decision that came out from the obvious disaster
of the Greek economy by the Troika policies the last six years. It
was not a decision that came out from the impoverishment of millions
of Greeks due to these policies.

This is
another tragic proof that the European parliament has become actually
a decorating element in the corrupted, lobby-occupied EU. It appears
that the only way for the European citizens to assert their rights,
is to take advantage of some internal conflict interests between
lobbyists inside this "remarkable" union.